The newly elected Peoria Unified School District (PUSD) board president is a conservative mother, declining to re-elect the sitting president.
PUSD elected its new president, Heather Rooks, during Thursday’s regular board meeting following their 8-hour study session. Members Janelle Bowles, Jeff Tobey, and Becky Proudfit voted for Rooks, with only board member Melissa Ewing voting against. Ewing didn’t provide an explanation for her “no” vote.
Proudfit attempted to re-elect herself, but only Ewing voted for her.
Public comment on the board president election expressed hope in the prospect of new leadership.
One mother and community advocate, Nikki Eancheff, explained that Rooks helped her navigate school procedures after her daughter encountered a boy in a girls’ restroom at Liberty High School.
“What Mrs. Rooks said earlier today in the retreat, that she was elected by parents to be our voice and be our champion and advocate here in the board room and the district level is the truth,” said Eancheff.
Several other mothers also expressed their overt support for Rooks due to her prioritization of parents while backing public schools.
Kristen Balthis with the Peoria Principals’ Association said that while their organization didn’t endorse any one candidate, they supported the candidate that “can facilitate the education environment that allows our children to thrive.”
Teddy Todd, who has spoken out against PUSD board policies before, expressed her pleasure with the makeup of the governing board for this year, and said she hoped the president would foster “trust, hope, and collaboration” among all members.
However, those aligned with the teachers’ unions disagreed with some parents’ desire for change.
Trina Berg, president of the Peoria Education Association (PEA), asked for the reelection of Becky Proudfit for board president. PEA is part of the Arizona Education Association and the National Education Association. Berg questioned whether Rooks’ lawsuit against PUSD presented a conflict of interest.
In September 2023, Rooks sued PUSD for prohibiting her from quoting Bible verses during board meetings. The First Liberty Institute is representing Rooks in her case, which is ongoing. The Arizona District Court scheduled in-person oral argument for Friday in the case.
Berg also said that Rooks didn’t exhibit the qualities of a president, citing her past decisions to step out of executive meetings she felt should be public as well as Rooks’ decision to not silence certain speech from her supporters.
“Allowing misconceptions and sometimes downright misinformation to flourish and move through your group of supporters on social media without any correction is not leadership material,” said Berg.
Devon Moseler, vice president of PEA, also asked for the reelection of Proudfit for board president.
“We may not always agree with decisions that have been made, but we have appreciated the transparency and willingness to discuss challenging topics in an effort to understand the needs of our educators, administrators, and students,” said Moseler.
Proudfit’s husband, Taylor Proudfit, urged the board members to change their minds on Rooks and vote for his wife. Taylor claimed that board members supporting Rooks weren’t voting in accordance with their constituents.
Rooks’ rise to the leadership position came, in part, from the elections of new members Bowles and Tobey, ensuring the board’s flip to a majority of more conservative-minded members.
In recent years, the PUSD board came under community and even national scrutiny for adopting policies that favored progressive ideologies. This included the alignment with the Biden administration’s interpretation of Title IX which ordered schools to allow bathroom or locker room access based on gender identity. Ewing was one of the defendants of that policy, arguing that discrimination based on gender identity violates Title IX protections.
Rooks attended PUSD and graduated from Sunrise Mountain High School. Rooks first took office in January 2023.
Rooks’ campaign platform prioritized parental rights, academics, and organizational transparency. She ran in opposition to mandates for masks and COVID vaccines, Critical Race Theory ideology, and sexual content materials in classrooms.
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Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) will no longer be using X to stay engaged with the community, with the given reason being a lack of a “family-friendly” environment.
SUSD made the announcement last week, also alluding to board policy necessitating their ceasing the use of X. The district will remain on Facebook and Instagram instead.
“In line with board policy IJNDB and our commitment to safety, SUSD schools are stepping away from X to prioritize family-friendly engagement,” said SUSD. “For updates, find us on Facebook, Instagram, or visit http://susd.org. Let’s stay connected in spaces that uphold our values.”
In line with board policy IJNDB and our commitment to safety, SUSD schools are stepping away from X to prioritize family-friendly engagement. For updates, find us on Facebook, Instagram, or visit https://t.co/EN0kZ8ruFl. Let’s stay connected in spaces that uphold our values. pic.twitter.com/ZJUyD9fi8D
— Scottsdale Unified School District (@ScottsdaleUSD) November 12, 2024
IJNDB refers to policy on the use of technology resources in instruction. Per that policy, the district implements technology protections against visual depictions that are obscene, child pornography, or content which may be discerned as harmful to minors.
Yet, the district allows children access to sexually explicit books and content in its libraries and classrooms.
In stepping away from the use of X, the district also remarked that X failed to align with its values. In addition to protections for sexually explicit materials, SUSD holds values such as transgenderism in minors, social emotional learning, and critical race theory.
SUSD made their announcement a week after Election Day, when Donald Trump won the presidency and Republicans secured a trifecta.
Tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk bought Twitter (now X) for the express purpose of preserving and supporting free speech following the 2020 election. During that election, the silencing of certain right-wing voices occurred under social media platforms such as Twitter and Big Tech companies.
SUSD lost nearly 500 students over the course of this past year, amounting to millions in lost revenue. The auditor general has scored the district as “high risk” due to its continued decline in enrollment. Enrollment has declined 10 percent under the tenure of SUSD Superintendent Scott Menzel, and reports have emerged of record staff turnover.
Additionally, SUSD spending on classrooms and teachers have hit another historical low for this school year: 54 percent versus nearly 64 percent from 20 years ago, just over the lowest fiscal year (2017, which amounted to 53 percent).
Parent watchdog group Scottsdale Unites for Education Integrity said the nine percent decrease signified a $40 million redirection of funds from academic achievement.
Menzel also enjoyed a pay raise earlier this semester despite falling short of academic performance goals: achievements in math, English-Language Arts (ELA), and science fell below desired outcomes. Over 8,000 students weren’t proficient in ELA, over 9,000 weren’t proficient in math, and over 12,000 weren’t proficient in science.
The only goals which Menzel accomplished were nonacademic, and they amounted to less than half of the goals set: increases in attendance rates, student participation in extracurricular and cocurricular activities, and certified staff retention; an establishment of a baseline for work-based learning opportunities and hours completed using Major Clarity; and production of a decision-making matrix and at least one proposal for action by June.
AZ Free News is your #1 source for Arizona news and politics. You can send us news tips using this link.
The notion of color-blindness derives from the principle that moral persons of conscience should disregard race in judging their fellow human beings. It is a sincere aspiration but not necessarily meant as a description of reality. It was once considered a non-controversial mainstay of the American ethos.
No longer. The term “color-blind” has become an object of scorn among America’s elite. The usual crowd directing our national groupthink has determined that proclaiming color-blindness is intentionally deceptive, simply a cheap cover for racism.
Thus, Critical Race Theory guru Ibram X. Kendi informs us that the most threatening racist movement is not the “alt-right’s drive for a White ethnostate but the regular American’s desire for a race-neutral one.’ Best-selling author Robin DiAngelo claims that the color-blind strategy boils down to “pretend we don’t see race and racism will end.”
One critic alleges that color blindness was “developed in the neo-conservative think tanks during the 1970s.” Another condemns color blindness as “part of a long-standing whiteness protection program, associated with indigenous dispossession, colonial conquest, slavery, segregation, and immigrant exclusion.”
It’s not clear where these professors acquired their bizarre claims, but the historical record tells a far different story. The ideal of color-blindness was not birthed in some loony right-wing outpost but was the philosophical basis of the fight against slavery. As author Coleman Hughes points out, color-blindness was the driving passion of civil rights leaders from Frederick Douglass to Martin Luther King.
Wendell Phillips, known as “abolition’s golden trumpet,” called in 1865 for the “creation of a government color-blind” in which all laws referencing race would be repealed. Later, the idea of color-blindness was the inspiration for the battle against Jim Crow.
In the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson, which affirmed the discredited “separate but equal” doctrine, the lone dissent was from Justice John Marshall Harlan. His declaration still rings through the ages that “our constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among its citizens.”
When then-NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall, later a Supreme Court Justice, argued segregation cases in the courts, he referred often to the Plessy dissent. “Our constitution is color-blind” became the mantra of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Color-blindness in the 1940s was the first demand of the original March on Washington, which successfully pressured FDR to integrate the defense industry. Color-blindness was also the first argument made in the NAACP’s appellate brief supporting the Brown v. Board decision, which finally reversed the Plessy decision in the 50s.
Americans sometimes forget how much progress was made when color-blindness was the guiding principle driving racial progress. By the 1950s, America was clearly lifting itself out of its deeply racist past. Economic opportunities for blacks were burgeoning. Black families and churches were strong. A solid black middle class was forming while black professionals and political leaders became more common.
So, what happened? How did we end up with a race-drenched public life where “systemic racism” is considered the accepted explanation for just about everything bad that happens. Award-winning public intellectuals teach that the races are inherently different and that treating individuals differently based on race is not only acceptable but desirable.
Citizens grounded in the philosophy of individual liberty are difficult for centralized government to control. The Marxist-inspired left clearly wants Americans to identify as members of an oppressed group, be it race, gender, or sexual orientation.
Life’s failures and disappointments can then be blamed on racism, even where none is readily apparent, and used to stoke racial resentments. Any successes or achievements are attributed not to individual merit or diligence but to the privileges bestowed on favored groups by government.
Ward Connerly, a leader in the anti-affirmative action movement, tells critics “I don’t care what color you are. Do you care what color I am?” That simple question may be the key to a brighter racial future.
Americans must decide if we really want to turn away from our Enlightenment-based notions of racial equality and once again embrace sanctioned racism. We will never achieve a society in which race really doesn’t matter if we can’t agree on the most basic principle of all— absolute equality granted by the Creator.
Dr. Thomas Patterson, former Chairman of the Goldwater Institute, is a retired emergency physician. He served as an Arizona State senator for 10 years in the 1990s, and as Majority Leader from 93-96. He is the author of Arizona’s original charter schools bill.
Everyone knows that political pundits, social media influencers, and the corporate media love a good narrative. And one of their favorites for years has been the claim that Arizona is trending blue—that a demographic shift toward Democrats is inevitable.
This ‘conventional wisdom’ is repeated so often that much of the Republican political class in the state has accepted it as fact. Some are even advising candidates that the only path forward for Republicans is to abandon their conservative principles, embrace center-left policy solutions, and settle for a future of divided government.
But a funny thing about narratives and conventional wisdom: numbers don’t lie, especially those showing party preference when people are registering to vote.
Last month, the Secretary of State updated the statewide voter registration data prior to the Presidential Preference Election. The latest figures show that Republicans are once again the largest voting bloc in Arizona, surpassing Independents by nearly 40,000. This is certainly an important development—especially given all the attention it received on social media when Independent registrations surpassed Republicans last year.
But that’s not the most significant voter registration trend…
More than 900 Arizona schools declined to answer if they teach Critical Race Theory.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne released figures showing that 900 schools would not answer five academic focus questions related to matters such as ensuring schools do not inappropriately expose students to explicit content and avoiding instruction that promotes racial division such as Critical Race Theory.
Of Arizona’s 2,467 district and charter schools, as of Feb. 29, 1,565 have affirmed that they are following these guidelines, but 902 have not.
Other questions attempt to ensure that any sexual content is developmentally appropriate, administrators fully support teacher discipline, and schools avoid excessive distractions such as Social Emotional Learning.
Social Emotional Learning claims to equip children with the ability to manage emotions, feel empathy for others, and maintain positive relationships, but it integrates Critical Race Theory in the education system.
“It is scandalous to see that more than 900 schools have declined to be transparent with parents who entrust their children to be educated by these schools,” Horne said. “Parents have the right to be fully informed about what their neighborhood schools value and how instructional time is used.”
The media claims public schools don’t teach CRT, Horne said. The superintendent said this is false, as the Balsz Elementary District on the east side of Phoenix explicitly and publicly teaches CRT.
“The fact that more than 900 districts and charter schools did not answer the question proves that the problem is widespread and distractions from academics are contributing to low test scores,” he said.
“Every instructional minute is precious, and every minute should be devoted to academics, not unnecessary distractions, lessons that divide people by race, or exposing students to subject matter that is not developmentally appropriate,” Horne continued.
The schools that declined to answer the questions will have that information on their school report card provided on the department’s website. If schools eventually choose to respond, their report card will be updated with that information.
Early next week, the department will finish compiling and releasing information on whether schools are following state law that requires instruction on the Holocaust and other genocides.
“Schools have a responsibility to teach to the state standards and graduating students who are academically proficient,” Horne said. “This is simple common sense and easily achievable by every school in the state.”
Elizabeth Troutman is a reporter for AZ Free News. You can send her news tips using this link.
